Putting Finger on Their Anger

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Wall Street has crashed, bankers are fleeing en masse and a giant finger descends from the sky to squish them all.

These days that qualifies as a feel-good fantasy and some people want to buy it.

It’s the scenario of the new video game “Squash the Street,” developed for the iPhone and iPod touch by Santa Monica-based Last Legion Games LLC. Retailing for just 99 cents, the company is boasting that sales are “fantastic” since the game’s July 4 release.

“We thought this was a sort of tongue-in-cheek take on what’s happening now,” said Last Legion Chief Executive Seth Gerson.

Here’s how it works.

Using the devices’ touch screen, players crush virtual bankers as they scurry around Wall Street, splattering cartoonish blood. Players earn cash for squashing bankers and lose money for each one who escapes off-screen.

Squash the Street is the third game produced by Last Legion, a nascent 12-employee studio that Gerson founded about a year ago. The game took just two and a half months to develop, reflecting how fast iPhone game makers can turn creative ideas into a market-ready product.

Last Legion is one of numerous studios developing iPhone games and applications, which consumers have flocked to because of their low price. Last week, Apple Inc. announced its online application store had recorded 1.5 billion downloads in its first year.

Gerson said so far “Squash the Street” has appealed to an unexpected demographic: Wall Street employees.

“We know a lot of investment bankers in New York, and they were in the Hamptons the other night laughing hysterically about it,” he said.

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